


show me how and i will

by herdingthoughts



Category: Original Work
Genre: Existential Angst, Gen, POV Second Person, human nature is the nature of reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26282371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herdingthoughts/pseuds/herdingthoughts
Summary: You reach out, and the rest of you reaches back. You cling to yourself in desperation; you are broken, and you are whole, and you are beautiful.“You are cruel, and vain,” you cry, and the universe echoes it in turn: “You are cruel, and vain.”





	show me how and i will

Once, you were alone. 

Not alone. You were _whole_ , vibrant, everlasting. A singularity resting within an expanse of void. You were everything, and you were nothing. You were one and all, you were light and dark. And you thought to yourself, _what greater joy than this? What higher meaning?_

But you were a liar, and your heart roiled. For lack of comfort in the deep abyss (though what is comfort to one who has always _been_?), you peered inward, into your own being, your own body. 

And you were beautiful. 

And you were unknowable. 

And you were _other—_ not _something_ so much as some _thing_ _,_ devoid of clarity and as loud as the void was silent. 

And you could not look away. 

And you _recoiled_. 

(And you raged and burned and shrieked and wept and _tore_ and _seethed_ and _ached_ and _bled—_ ) 

_“I’m sorry. I am sorry.”_

Once upon a time, you were whole, vibrant, and everlasting. 

Once upon a time, you wept and did not understand why. 

Once, you said “I am tired; I want more than this,” and you shed that weight without a second thought. (Perhaps it was folly to hope you could isolate the pain without destroying the joy.) 

You are scattered now, and without mind nor will you wander the fathoms. Sleeping. Searching. The pain has dulled—you have dispersed it throughout the void, so it feels as though it bears no consequence upon you. Nonetheless, an ache persists; a steady thrum in the deep. 

Eons pass. The thrum pulls you—all of you, every particle of you—together. The collisions that ensue, the _light_ that spills forth from them, fills you with roaring strength and new fire. 

You burn. In the distance, you see stars. And the stars see you, and the stars cry out. They ask you why you did this. 

You don’t know what to say. 

You grow solid and stern, wrinkled and trembling with age. Your bones protrude into the sky, your skin stretching, shifting atop molten fire. You build yourself up and shatter, then over time you rebuild. You are ground to fine powder and scattered in the wind. 

Now you lash, and you howl (as you did back then, except now you are _heard_ , and those who hear you wonder why you are in pain when you are free, when you have always been _needed_ ). You breathe life into flames and dance across the heavens. From the very first lungs you _emerge._ You are story, you are song. You are the joy of creation, the cry of new life. You carry the sound of laughter and prayer and the ghosts of tears; you spill them upon your bones and skin so that they may cleanse you of your filth. 

The ghosts fall, and you are falling with them. Plunging into a new abyss, a new deep. You are legion, dispersing and reforming, mingling with the dirt and ash beneath. When the waters embrace you without hesitation, your temper subsides. For the first time, you feel safe. 

Still there are times when you loathe yourself—long hours when you release your fury upon this wicked body: you carve, gnash, spill, bend. You _steal_ and _take_ and _end_. 

In the aftermath, you weep and you heal. You whisper condolences, and you are comforted. From the ruins of your body sprout tendrils of green; climbing vines and petals that yearn for the stars. They are so far away now. 

You open your eyes for the first time, and you _consume_. You taste the sweetness of fruit, smell the tang of blood, observe the passing of the ages. You feel the warm softness of touch; you feel love blossom in each of your beating hearts—each so different from the others, each a different shade and hue. All of them are yours; all of them are hated and loved in equal measure. 

You are man. You are woman. You are both. You are neither. 

You are confused. You hurt. You rage. You love and wish you could be _one_ again. 

( _You wonder where that thought came from. You brush it aside and cook some eggs. You call your children and pets to the garden to play. They are yours. They are_ you.) 

You hold your mother’s hand and try not to shake as the breath departs from her lungs. You carry it to the heavens and it becomes a song on the other side of the world. A baby is born in a small cabin that day; she is discarded shortly after. Somewhere in the woods you hold a whimpering beast to your chest and stroke and kiss it until its pain is only a memory—soil and bones beneath the flowers. It remembers you even as you lie still under the dirt. 

You stave off that loneliness even now, knowing that you and the rest of your kind breathe all the same, hurt all the same, die all the same. 

You live again. You die again. You lie in the dark (you wonder why you fear the dark, why you sleep in the dark) and remember what you are, just for one pained moment. And you cry out, “I see you. I _see_ you.” Do you hear your lungs straining? The pulse of your heart? Do you feel your own rage in the tempest? Your longing in the mist? Apotheosis in your bonds? Do you persist because you love yourself, or is it a cruelty born of spite? 

You reach out, and the rest of you reaches back. You cling to yourself in desperation; you are broken, and you are whole, and you are beautiful. 

“You are cruel, and vain,” you cry, and the universe echoes it in turn: “You are cruel, and vain.” 

“I am sorry,” you say, “I can be better.” The universe takes the words and plants them in your heart: “I am sorry. I can be better.” 

“Is this all we are?” you ask. “Do you love me now? Did you ever?” 

And the universe stills, and the universe laughs—the kind that says _how silly_ , the kind that says _I’m sorry_ , the kind that says _I don’t know._

It—he—she—they hold you. You hold yourself. 

“I want to. I’m learning. Show me how and I will.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure how much of this was influenced by that Minecraft poem (never played it, just read the poem) but anyway this was a Philosophy assignment of mine and I jumped on the chance to make it angsty.


End file.
